Indiana University Kokomo’s Women of the Well House organization distributes 13 grants

Women of the Well House, a philanthropic circle of women who contribute at least $1,000 per year or more to university and community projects, has funded 13 projects in and around Indiana University Kokomo. The total amount of funding for 2024 is $44,000, with a lifetime total of grant awards of $229,000 since Women of Well House was created in 2017.

According to an article on Indiana University Kokomo’s website, some of the funding was put to use to treat students within the School of Business to a leadership retreat at Camp Tecumseh. The peer leadership program, which aims to equip students with mentorship skills to help incoming freshmen, launched with the Fall 2024 semester and had 18 student mentors. The leadership retreat will prepare more mentors for the Fall 2025 semester.

Ashley Leicht, a visiting lecturer at Indiana University Kokomo, was quoted as saying of the funding, “The funding will allow us to prepare our mentors through this retreat. The purpose is [to] strengthen the communication, teamwork, and leadership skills of our mentors, empowering them to bring these enhanced abilities back to campus to support incoming freshmen in fall 2025.”

There were 13 other projects that benefited from the grants supplied by the Women of the Well House organization in 2024. The projects were both in support of the Indiana University Kokomo campus and students and the greater Kokomo community as a whole.

The 2025 LEAD Conference project received funding for the Women in Business student organization’s first event. Gloria Preece, who is the assistant dean of the School of Business and an assistant professor of personal financial planning and marketing, applied for the grant in order to pay fees for guest speakers, organize workshops and activities, and organize networking opportunities for participants. 

Another project receiving funding to improve the Indiana University Kokomo community is the Green Horizons Initiative, spearheaded by Andy Tuholski, who serves as the director of the Office of Sustainability and assistant professor of political science. The Green Horizons Initiative is going to improve the ecological health of the campus over the next five years by eradicating invasive species, replanting native species, and creating greater biodiversity all over campus. Students will benefit greatly from the Green Horizons Initiative, as they will be able to participate in these processes through volunteer opportunities, taking advantage of the “living laboratory” offered by the campus grounds, and other hands-on learning.

Samantha Fouts, who is an clinical assistant professor of nursing, also received funding for her project, a Summer 2025 FIT Camp for Kids, which is a weeklong summer camp for elementary aged children to learn about healthy lifestyles. Nursing faculty will be running the camp and nursing students will participate as camp counselors, which they will also receive college credit for doing.

Other campus projects that received funding include a textbook affordability program to help students save money on course materials, a mentoring program and welcome event for students training to become paraprofessionals, a project furthering data collection about birds on campus, and two travel projects with destinations in England and Denmark.

In the community, Sarrah Grubb, an assistant professor of education, received funding for her project that will benefit the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library, called the African American Read-In. The project will promote the work of Black writers and their lived experiences to the community and to School of Education students who will gain a foundational understanding of Black literature.

Art gallery coordinator Carrie Baxter received funding for an Artwork Photography Workshop, which will provide a skills workshop for photographing and editing images to provide career skills for aspiring artists.

Angie Siders, the assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management, received enough funding to add 100 additional students in this year’s Etiquette Dinner, which annually provides local high school students with the opportunity to learn proper etiquette at dinner events.

For more information about Indiana University Kokomo, visit the school’s website.